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Volume 7 | Issue 0 | Article ID 3463 | Mar 16, 2009 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 65 – A Reflection 広島・長崎六十五 周年−−一考察 Satoko Oka Norimatsu Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 65 – A year were added to the Hiroshima Cenotaph, Reflection making the total number of deaths of Hiroshima’s hibakusha 269,446.3 In Nagasaki Satoko Norimatsu on August 9, 3,114 names were added to make a total of 152,276. Adding the death tolls from both cities, the total of Hiroshima/Nagasaki deaths as of August, 2010 was 421,722. The total number of hibakusha, including the living and dead, is at least 649,287, and keeping in mind those unaccounted for, it is probably more. Simply put, approximately, one third of hibakusha survive, speaking and living on behalf of all. No matter how many years go by, the number of people who were in or under the fiery clouds from the explosion of the two atomic-bombs, the first to be used against people, will always be the same, whether alive or dead. It includes “There is no one who can tell what it was like those who perished instantly at and near the at the hypocentre when the bomb dropped.” hypocentres, as Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi described above,4 without ever being able to - Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi1 speak or even comprehend their own experience. It is for those dead and living 65 years – lives and deaths people that we younger generations are acting and speaking on behalf of, and from whom we On countless occasions this year, sixty-five learn. And having fewer, or even none, of those years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki surviving people will in no way diminish the bombings, I have heard and read thatsignificance of our actions, our shared hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivors) are dying memories, and our knowledge, to be inherited away, and that we need to eliminate nuclear by future generations, so that never again will weapons from the face of the earth, for the nuclear weapons be used, in combat or in future of humanity, to be sure, but also so that experiments. their dying wishes are fulfilled. Indeed, hibakusha are not getting any younger. The In fact, in the minds of the hibakusha, the average age of the 227,565 hibakusha who hold distinction between death and life is not as atomic-bomb health books as of March 2010 is clear as we might think, as Robert J. Lifton 76.73.2 On August 6 this year, the names of carefully showed in the first psychological 5,501 hibakusha who had died during the past study of the hibakusha, “Death in Life.”5 I have 1 7 | 0 | 0 APJ | JF worked, since 2006, as an instructor and participated as a member of a local Article 9 coordinator of “Hiroshima, Nagasaki and group. Talking about “survivor’s guilt,” Ono Beyond,” the annual joint study tour ofReiko, a retired early childhood educator and a American University (Washington D.C.) and Nagasaki hibakusha, said, “I think the feeling is Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto). During that a little different from ‘tsumi’ (Japanese word for program, we, some fifty students and faculty ‘guilt’). It is a sense of ‘ikiteite moshiwake-nai’ members, visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki for (I am sorry to be still living).” I took that as a three days each, including August 6 and 9 “sense of owing,” meaning the survivor does memorials, meeting and hearing from many not feel s/he deserves his or her life, which hibakusha as we travel. One of them, Shimohira should have been possessed by those who died. Sakue, a Nagasaki hibakusha who was ten Just as many Japanese literally apologize when years old at the time of the bombing, tells us of they are actually thankful, many hibakusha are the hardship of surviving as an a-bomb orphan thankful for their lives and are making the best with poverty, injury, radiation-caused diseases, of them for the cause of nuclear abolition and and loneliness. “There were two kinds of peace. courage – courage to die; and courage to live. My sister chose the former; I chose the latter,” Shimohira tells us as she speaks of her younger sister, who, in desperation, lay on a railway track and was killed by a train, eleven years after the bombing. From right – Ono Reiko, Iwasa Mikiso, Terasawa Shigeru, hibakusha delegates to Vancouver’s Peace Forum 2006,7 with the author near Hidankyo’s office in Tokyo Shimohira Sakue telling her story near Iwasa Mikiso, a retired law professor and a Nagasaki’s hypocentre to a group of US, Hiroshima hibakusha is one of them. At age 16, Japanese, Canadian, Korean and Chinese he was blown away by the bomb blast in the students backyard of his house. His mother was trapped under the collapsed house, and unable to help her, Iwasa had to run, as fire quickly devoured Every summer since 2006, four hibakusha and I the house. During the Peace Forum I produced have a “reunion” in Tokyo after the visit to “Chichi to kuraseba (The Face of Jizo)”, the late Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The four were delegates Inoue Hisashi’s play in which a dead father’s of Hidankyo,6 the national organization of spirit appears in front of his daughter who nuclear-bomb victims, to the World Peace survived the bomb. The daughter was Forum held in Vancouver in 2006, in which I struggling with the pain and guilt, after 2 7 | 0 | 0 APJ | JF surviving in a situation similar to Iwasa’s – UN Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review having to flee, leaving her father behind. Conference, held from May 3 to 28, 2010. It was unprecedented that so large a number of To the daughter who resists finding happiness hibakusha gathered at one place outside of in life, the father “ghost” yells, Japan. They were getting old, and many came expecting it would be their last chance to participate in an overseas conference calling on Takezo (Father): Listen to me, will state leaders to abolish nuclear weapons. With ya! When you were next to me knowledge of the utter failure of the previous then, didn’t you just cry and tell conference of 2005, in which no final me how inhuman it all was, how agreement was reached, the hibakusha were horrible, that we had to part like particularly hopeful this year. Since April 5, that? Remember? Didn’t I say to 2009, when US President Obama delivered the you, “A parting like this should “Prague Speech,”9 in which he expressed a will never happen again, till the end of to act for a “world without nuclear weapons,” time. It’s not human.” Were you the expectation has grown that the US, with a able to hear my last words, giant share of the world’s nuclear arsenals Mitsue? “Live. Live my life for me (with Russia over 95% of the world total),10 too!” So, you see, you will go on finally had a leader who was serious about living because of me. nuclear disarmament. Obama became very Mitsue (Daughter): Because of popular in Japan, and many campaigns sought you? to invite him to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima’s Mayor Akiba Tadatoshi started a Takezo: Yes. Go on living so that campaign called “Obamajority,” with the intent the world will remember that tens of making Obama’s “nuclear-free” message the of thousands of people have had to majority view. “Obamajority” T-shirts sold fast say goodbye like that and it’s at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum’s 11 inhuman...”8 bookstore. With this speech, Obama became the first president of the United States to express the “moral responsibility” of the US to Having Iwasa in the audience made me feel act, as “the only nuclear power to have used special, but also nervous at the same time. Who nuclear weapons.” While was hardly a direct am I doing this, as if I knew anything? After the expression of responsibility towards the atomic play, Iwasa told me, with his usual subtle, bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was a gentle smile, “I wish my mother would appear courageous step forward for a US leader to put in front of me, like in the play.” I could only the notion of “responsibility” and the act of respond with silence. The dead are speechless. using nuclear weapons in a single sentence. Since then, I have always been conscious of the dead, and their unborn children and grandchildren. In that way, they are not silent. They are in the background of everything I do, and I listen to them. Hope of Prague 2009, to New York 2010 Iwasa was one of about one hundred hibakusha who came to New York to urge action by the 3 7 | 0 | 0 APJ | JF A-bomb Exhibit at UN Visitor Centre Obama speaking in Prague, April 5, 2009 This May, the hundred hibakusha were active in New York. For the first time,Hidankyo hosted a large A-bomb panel exhibit in the U.N. Headquarters’ Visitor Centre’s lobby, which ran Hidankyo Executives at UN Swedish from May 3 to the end of June. Hibakusha took Mission12 turns attending the exhibit, answering questions and telling their stories to visitors. The hibakusha visited forty schools, telling Hidankyo representatives met with Secretary their stories to local students. Another group of General Ban Ki-moon, and wrote to all 192 over one hundred people served as local member states of the U.N.

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